"I'll meet you under the WORDS," Gwyneth Lewis, former National Poet, Wales

       The northern tier of land in Australia, Aborigines, a man who is the last speaker of his language; across the miles, Welsh, the tongue under fire and pressure to be liquidated, only through struggle vindicated and now on equal footing with English; Hawaii, lonely islands mid Pacific, the language shunted aside and forbidden, but struggling back in the mouths of school children speaking only Hawaiian.

       "Language Matters" in being a people's identity, its culture, its roots, its place; to see these exemplars, knowing 6,000 languages exist, 3,000 are endangered and could be gone by century's end; to see the place (the beautiful landscapes, animal life, and where water meets and laps and licks), and to realize how native words are the very grit and gristle of these human lives in their surrounds.

       ALL this is evoked and cherished and intelligently uncovered in this wonderful documentary, both frightening and courageous! 

       You may watch this film online at this PBS location.

"Language is a lens through which we see the world."

       Too much struck with poet Bob Holman's beautiful journey in the documentary mentioned yesterday to even find the words to begin talking about "Language Matters" these few minutes after the close of the film on PBS.

       Let the phrase I quote and use as the title of today's post be its signature phrase till I can gather my thoughts about it.

"Language Matters"

       Just musing what a privilege it is to wander among words.  There are multiple languages, of course.  And last two days, news of Google's huge advances in translating from one language instantaneously into numbers of others, into spoken word and text simultaneously!

       And a wonderful documentary (I'm recording from PBS TV tomorrow evening) called "Language Matters" on dying languages being learned and memorized by non-native speakers of them to preserve, to honor, to respect the cultural meanings and contributions embedded in those tongues worth preserving.

       Horizons are made to be succeeded.

"GDKNOWS"

       Surprise license plate seen today:  GDKNOWS.

       My feeling is the owner of that plate is very proud of it and pleased to know he or she and no one else got it.

       Of course it's a phrase that can express frustration--"God and nobody else could possibly know that because I sure don't."  But it's also an expression of faith that if or when no one else does, God does know.

       The missing "O" is in keeping with long tradition from the Torah that God's name cannot be said, only "stand-ins" for it.  So English will often show as "G-d" to honor that.

       If a government-required identification can make food for thought and wonder while it's at it, something worthwhile has happened. 

"PUWN-yapple"

       It's hard for me to see or hear a certain word without thinking of my mother's story of herself and her sister Rose when they stopped at a drug store for a treat on the way home from school.

       Mom, her four sisters and brother grew up in America, learned English as a first language.  So it's understandable the two couldn't keep from laughing when a man came up to the soda fountain near them and asked for a "PUWN-yapple sundae."

       The counter guy couldn't catch it and asked, "What was that?"  "A PUWN-yapple sundae.  PUWN-YAPPLE."

       The man spoke Yiddish natively, no doubt.  But Ida and Rose got the lecture of a lifetime from their dad when they told the story that night at home.  "Don't make fun and hurt a man's feelings!"

"Next Time, Fail Sooner."

       "Life's Little Instruction Calendar" has got me going, got me thinking.  Just four words it had to say on a recent day:


                          "Next time, fail sooner."


       Fear of failure stopped me from trying, hurting, learning, more than once.  But maybe the failures later would have been avoided had I done so.

"Pineapple"

       As Connie had me bring home a pineapple the other day, it made me ask, "What does either pine or apple have to do with pineapple?"

       Apparently it's the look of the fruit, its resemblance to a pine cone that got the "pine" part of it.  How about "apple"?  Why not just "pinefruit"?  I don't know, but since "pine" can be traced back to Indo-European pele, meaning "fat," it's possible, though there's almost no likeness to an apple, it was a way of saying, "This is delicious like an apple, but a much fatter piece of fruit."

       Speculative at best, but it's funny how we like to have answers to questions like these, even if they're a bit "wild blue yonder"ish.

"Number Our Days"

       Parts of my medicine are more easily kept track of today than heretofore.  I have some asthma inhalers.  No more dividing inhalations per day into total number of puffs in inhaler to determine what day the medicine will run out, then marking that day in my engagement calendar!

       No, sir.  Now I have a number-counter.  Press, receive meds, and watch the number on the counter reduce by one!  Get to zero, and you need a new inhaler.  No more figuring.

       "Number Our Days" can now take its original referent and profound meaning:

                  Teach us to number our days aright,
                  that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

                            Psalm 90, Verse 12

"ho-mo-phone"

       I'm a speech kind of guy--so I'm subject to  this kind of mistake, which I just spied on a previous post:  "cite" for "site," speaking of a website.

       Who can always remember that there's site and there's cite and there's sight?  And the root meanings of cite and site don't really help you distinguish and understand much about the difference and the "rightness" of one or the other.

       And just today, I'm picking up my first hearing aids which are by "Siemens," and of course in my head are rolling around "seaman's" and "semen's"; you want a sentence?  OK, a "seaman's" favorite place is at sea, and "semen's" very sticky.

       Look, these are . . . both groups . . . "Same sound" words = "homophones."   Same sound words homophone. 

       And suddenly all I can think of is "ET phone home." 

"Hop in the icebox, give mir a glaz milk."

      Got a good few hours of peaceful sleep due to my doc's nice prescription for a liquid medicine. It had 3.8 per cent alcohol and some codeine to help me sleep to shake some leftover symptoms from the flu.

       I woke up, but feeling good, half way through the night and decided another couple teaspoons wouldn't hurt.

       All I could think of was the anecdote our company clerk told me during Korea.  He had worked as a bus boy in the Catskills, and he smilingly remembered the little old Jewish lady who in the late evening would call him over and say, "Hop in the ice box, give mir a glaz milk."  It was a nice night-cap for her.

       For this little old Jewish guy, the cherry-flavored liquid was filling the bill. 

"Broken Windows" : : "Broken Letters"

      There may be an analogy between the “broken windows” crime philosophy and those half hour daily lessons they give Alzheimer’s patients in numbers, reading, writing, and simple organizing tasks.   [See post of Dec. 17, 2014.]

      Police found that arresting street guys for accosting cars at stop lights, expecting  money from drivers for wiping their windows, helped prevent larger crimes.  Repairing broken windows helps prevent a sense of deterioration creating an atmosphere that further destruction or theft is OK.

       “Take care of the little stuff that’s wrong, and the bigger stuff gets taken care of too.”

       When the “little things” that were wrong with the Alzheimer patients . . . the lost facility of  adding numbers, reading words, signing their names, putting things in rows, writing today’s date . . . when these elementary things improved, gradually they could remember better, and attend more to how they dressed, and interact more with others, and even return to former favored activities, gone for years.

       [Please visit this follow-up post of Dec. 21, 2014.]

"Hygiene"

       My dental technician ended her recent hour with me by saying, “Your hygiene is very good as usual.”  I was complimented, of course.  But I had a niggling reservation for some reason.

       I just realized it’s because “hygiene” had a different meaning earlier in my life.  I think maybe we studied hygiene in 7th or 8th grade.  It had more to do with personal body cleanliness, as I recall it.
 
       Oh, well, my teeth are personal, albeit half manufactured, and it is something I personally take care of, gladly, (now that I’m retired and have time to do it).  So “hygiene very good”?  compliment received, compliment taken!

       Word does come from Greek, and a Goddess was named it, Hygeia, “healthy living.”

              [To find what kids in their teens ARE thinking about re                                "hygiene basics," visit this cite.] 

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: Need an MD?

                           Poetry Equation of the Week

                                 Morbidity : Disease : : 
                                  Mortality : Decease

Morbidity and Mortality

       OK so the flu vaccine hasn't done its work too well this year (couple witnesses to that in this house; yet we're glad we took it, and we'll do it again next time--minimum?  no harm done, with possible benefits, and to our minds, multiple benefits over the past many, many years).

       BUT . . . when they give out these statistics on how much of each demographic group has been affected and in what ways, old, young, hospitalizations, deaths, they do it in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  Couldn't they separate the two?!

       I'm sure I'm in that report:  I spent one night in the hospital.  The "morbidity" OK.  Time enough for the other when it's needed!
 

            [Morbidity is 1. a diseased symptom or state; 2. the incidence of disease within respective groups.]

            [morbus L. = "disease"]

"Verklempt"

       It started with Connie and my talking about how “unkempt” the bed was lately:  our laziness.  Then it moved on to “verklempt,” probably from former Saturday Night Live comic Mike Meyers rather than a word we would have used.  It’s Yiddish for “clenched” or "choked," emotionally overwhelmed.

       And it’s pronounced more with an “f” than a “v”:  [fir-KLEMPT], but an expressive word it is! 

       “I’m verklempt!”  Nothing to do with “unkempt,”  but a mate’s being that way might make the partner verklempt! 

"Lackluster"

       Hearing a performance being described as "lackluster" made me aware again of the peculiarity of a word composed of a verb and a noun, the whole word becoming . . . an adjective.

       It reminded me of the wonderful word "stick-to-itiveness."  In this case we have a verb, a preposition, an impersonal pronoun; the "ive" makes it an adjective; and the "ness" makes the word finally--a NOUN.

       Praise the gods of language--they pull off some mighty tricks!

            (For my tribute to the latter word's fortitude, please visit my post on stick-to-itiveness here.)


       [There was no blog hiatus; I kept doing one each day.  But I guess my flu confusion knocked the blog off-kilter, and I couldn't figure how to enter anything till son David came over and solved it for me.]


     

"Protected Health Information"?

       Last paragraph of a "form" at a hearing-aid business, which is apparently requesting my signature of "consent":


      "You have a right to request that we restrict how we use and disclose your protected health information for the purpose of marketing, treatment, payment or health care operations.  Depending on the nature of your request, we are not required by law to grant your request.  However, if we do decide to grant your request, we are bound by our agreement.  You have the right to revoke this consent in writing, except to the extent we already have used or disclosed your protected health information in reliance on your consent.
       _____________________________      
                                   Signature
                         _______________
                                       Date"
                                     

       This speaks of "your protected health information" twice, but doesn't it sound suspiciously like I'm being asked to sign my consent to leaving such information "unprotected"?  In any case, I couldn't sign it for the reason I gave them:  I didn't understand it.
                                                  

Addendum on "Influenza"

       The real "working" part of that word influenza is what we call it for short, "flu."

       Again as might be figured out, it comes from a root meaning "flow," suggestive of water running.  It's not only water that moves, as we might say, "fluently," "fluidly," but also what happens in "influence," whether by the stars (see yesterday's post), or, perhaps the way the disease moves not only within the body, seemingly everywhere to make itself felt, or, moves from person to person so easily -- it virtually flows -- and readily exerts its influence.

      

"Influenza"

       "Flu" is making the rounds.  It's short for Italian [inflluenza], meaning "influence" as you might surmise.

       The reason?  Apparently when these widely spread epidemics of malaise and sickness took place, It was felt and believed to be due to the influence of the stars.

Names? I've got two or three for you.

        I told Kineetha our dental technician that  I came up with a way to remember the new dentist's name, "a Door Jamb" because his name is Dr. Adorjan.

       Thinking about names while Kineetha cleaned, I recalled that someone I knew who worked with student records at the University of Minnesota told me the funniest name she came across in the thousands and thousands she'd seen was . . . Assinida Willinshitter.  Kineetha laughed, and I couldn't keep from it even while Kineetha resumed. 

       As I left, I realized I didn't know the long-time receptionist's name.  I asked.  "Dina," she said. "Dina?" I said. "No.  Dina."  "D-I-N-A?" I spelled.  "No.  GEEE-na."  "Oh, Gina," said I, "I've got a 2 o'clock hearing appointment too."  Lots of laughter from GINA.

       And I had it.

Language As She's Spoke by Yogi

       I wrote of receiving The Yogi Book by Yogi Berra, and here are a few of my favorite inimitable "Yogi-isms" as cited (and sometimes "explained") in the book:


                            "We were overwhelming underdogs."

 "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to                                                         stop them?"

                            "The future ain't what it used to be."

                     "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to                                                                   yours."


       Not a bad ballplayer either.

              

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: "Trying"/"Trying"

       Re the title of yesterday's post, I started without the bracketed "It's," added it later.

       Yes, often news stories have a background, complications, reversals, saying "no" to something that went before, and we have to keep attempting ("trying") to understand the various stages of contradiction that went into TODAY'S News.  (Already that story is outdated as a new state law went into effect January 1st allowing licenses for illegal immigrants.)

       "Try" (verb) comes from Old French [trier], to "sort," "pick out," "sift," what a reporter and editor do and we need to follow in order to understand.  And that sorting and that following can be "trying" (adjective) for reporters and readers, "severely straining the power of endurance" (Merriam-Webster).

       Both meanings can apply here.

[It's] Trying to Understand the News

        Wanting to avoid a party, your spouse tells you, "You can't not go!"  Meaning?  You have to definitely go.  Two negatives make a positive.

        With complications in law and twists in events, newspaper accounts have LOTS of negatives:

       "A state appeals court panel Friday overturned a ban on the Los Angeles Police Deparment's controversial vehicle impound policy that restricts when officers can seize the cars of unlicensed drivers."

       I count SIX negatives (not only "no" or "not" is negative):  "overturned," "ban," "impound," "restricts," "seize" and "unlicensed."   I can't untangle it here, but it's about whether it's fair for people who legally cannot get driver's licenses to be fined and punished for driving without a license.

       Six negatives = positive!  Turns out it is unfair, and (most) illegal immigrants are free from fines and punishment for driving!  

click on comic to enlarge

(The L.A. Times story with the sentence above can be read here.)

The Turn of a Year, the Return of a Haiku

       It was while looking for another haiku yesterday that I found Ann K. Schwader's wonderful "year's end" poem.  Having come up with that haiku and placed it on the blog, I then remembered the exact words of part of the one I was looking for, tried it out on the Internet and FOUND the new year's poem I had been searching for.

       Besides a great sense of humor and humility, Issa's sensitivity and compassion seem boundless:

                                       THE ORPHAN SPEAKS:
                                         THE YEAR-END PARTY...
                                         I AM EVEN ENVIOUS
                                       OF SCOLDED CHILDREN

So glad to have discovered and rediscovered haiku worthy to end the old year and begin the new one.  If they happen to strike notes of self-effacement on the one hand and compassion on the other, I'm thankful for both reminders as the year turns.


(This translation of the haiku by Issa is from Japanese Haiku by Peter Beilenson, which can be found here.)